Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management: Researching engineering failures or disasters

Take time to plan the keywords you are going to use in your search. What type of engineering disaster are you interested in; a bridge collapse, an offshore catastrophe, a railway accident, an aircraft crash, a structural failure, a disaster at sea? As well as your main keywords think about associated terms such as faults, defects, negligence, engineering failures etc. Map out a list of alternative terms that you want to search for and keep a note of these.

Also plan out the type of documents and information sources that you think may be relevant to your literature review – books written about the disaster, general works on engineering failures with case studies that include the incident you are interested in, eyewitness accounts, press reports and newspaper material, journal articles in professional and academic engineering journals, government committees of enquiry, legislation at the time and any subsequent changes to improve safety procedures, health and safety documentation and industry codes of practice.

This will all help you to choose where to search. SUPrimo Library Collections tab will tell you what books, journals and reports we have in stock, the Articles + databases tab will help you find specific articles. Specialist databases such as OHSIS or ProQuest's Engineering Collection can help you find more detailed references, other useful sources to search are linked in the right hand column below.

For further help pop by the enquiry desk on Level 4.